


Turbulence

by Sholio



Series: The Epic Post-Series Road Trip of Destiny [1]
Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Bonding, Childhood Trauma, Friendship, Gen, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 16:37:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16245617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: A little interlude at 30,000 feet, set post-S2. For my h/c bingo square "phobias."





	Turbulence

Ward studied the minibar in the back of the Rand jet. With a small sigh, he reached past the top-shelf bourbon and well-aged Scotch for a bottle of Perrier.

"You want anything?" he called up the aisle. When there was no answer: "Hey, Earth to Danny."

"Huh? Oh, sorry, Ward." Danny's tousled head appeared over the back of his seat. "No, I'm fine, thanks."

Ward poured the Perrier into a plastic cup. The plane jolted, as it had been doing off and on for the last half-hour or so, slopping mineral water onto his wrist. They were hitting turbulence over the Rockies as the jet droned onward into the night. Ward sighed, braced his hip against the cabinet beside him, and waited it out before reaching for a napkin to dab at his sleeve.

He looked up the aisle again, toward the just-visible top of Danny's head. They hadn't talked much since leaving New York. Ward was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he'd left New York and was set to leave the USA without so much as a toothbrush. Aside from his passport, he had practically nothing except (literally) the clothes on his back.

... well, the clothes on his back plus a private plane and enough money to buy whatever he wanted as soon as they touched down in Hong Kong. He smiled slightly to himself. In most ways it was just another business trip, albeit a weird one.

Except he hadn't cleared his calendar; he hadn't even so much as texted Katie to tell her yet. And he wasn't sure if he was coming back.

"You're a bad influence, Danny," he remarked over his shoulder, pouring the cup the rest of the way full.

No answer. The floor rolled under his feet again, tilting him into the cabinet opposite. He kept his hand steady, not spilling a drop. When the plane straightened out, he looked thoughtfully up the aisle, thinking about things like Danny's silence and the tightness in Danny's voice just now and a plane crash fifteen years ago. Then he reached for the hot water tap.

A few minutes later, cup of tea in one hand and Perrier in the other, he navigated his way up the aisle, past the table where he'd been reading a Hong Kong guidebook in the private jet's little lounge area. He went up a couple of seats further, where Danny was sitting with his sock feet on the seat like a kid, arms wrapped around his knees, looking out into the night.

Ward sat down across from him. Danny glanced over at him and gave him a quick, tight smile, that brightened a little when Ward held out the cup of tea. As Danny took the paper cup, Ward felt the trembling in his hands.

"Really gets to you, doesn't it," Ward said, looking not at Danny but out the window, at the faintly brighter line on the horizon where somewhere beyond the night, the sun waited for them on the other side of the world.

Danny made a small sound as if in denial, and then he said, "Yeah." He curled his hands around the warm paper cup. He was pale under the overhead lights, the dark window reflecting his face back like a wavering ghost.

Ward gazed out the window and sipped his sparkling water. As the plane jolted under them again, he said, "You know what gets to me?"

"What?" Danny said after a minute.

"Greenhouses."

Danny frowned at him.

"Yeah, you heard me. Greenhouses. That damp, growing-plants smell. The penthouse always smelled like that, those damn gardens he had in there. It doesn't always make that ..." He waved a hand next to his temple, looking for the right words. "That leap, that connection, that ... trigger. I guess it depends on the plants, has to be exactly the right plants. Like, I can walk into a florist's and be fine, usually. But Joy had this perfume with an earthy undertone to it. I could barely be in the same room with her when she was wearing it. There was one time someone brought flowers into a board meeting, I don't know what the hell they were, but I had to ... leave."

"It's a few different things for me," Danny said, leaning the side of his head against the window and not quite looking at Ward. "Turbulence in planes, that one's pretty straightforward. But other stuff'll do it. Cold, sometimes. But not always. This, though ..." He took a breath and let it out slowly through his nose as the plane jolted again.

"Sucks," Ward said succinctly.

Danny huffed a small laugh. "Yeah. It does." He looked up suddenly, and caught Ward's eyes with a look of pure sincerity. "I wish someone had been there for you, Ward. I wish someone could have stopped what your dad did to you."

There were things Danny could get away with saying that would have sounded like shallow platitudes coming from anyone else. Ward had to look away, though looking out the window just meant meeting his own eyes in the reflection, and that wasn't really better. "Yeah, well." He touched the water to his lips, wanting it to be whiskey. " _I_ could have stopped it anytime I wanted, just by walking away."

"You couldn't," Danny said. "Because of Joy."

"I told myself that." Ward let out a breath, tipped his head back against the seat. "It felt that way at the time. Like I was trapped. Like I _couldn't_ do anything else but what he said, no matter how deep in I got, no matter what he broke or how many times ..." He stopped for a minute, looked up at the ceiling of the plane. Danny was silent, listening. "Anyway, looking back on it now, the solutions seem obvious. I take the cops up to Dad's penthouse ... what are the Hand gonna do, take on the whole NYPD? I could take Joy and leave the country -- you can't even imagine how many times I started to, even bought plane tickets for us and then threw 'em in the trash. Or I could tell her the truth and let her make her own decisions. Or don't follow his orders, play a game right back; it's not like I _had_ to do what he said ..."

He trailed off and pressed the rim of the plastic cup against his lip, not really drinking, just giving himself something to do with his mouth to stop himself from talking. 

"I didn't have to fight Davos," Danny said. The words came in bursts, starting and stopping. "In K'un Lun, I mean. I could've just walked away. I didn't _need_ to face Shou-Lao. No one was forcing me. I didn't have to take that away from him. I could've let him have it."

"So could he," Ward murmured.

"Yeah, sure. My point is, it's easy to see the right decision in the rear-view mirror, a lot harder when you're right in the middle of it. It's easy to say somebody should have done this or that, even when that somebody is yourself."

"Trying to convince me or you?"

"Both," Danny said, and his smile was a wan ghost without much humor in it.

"Jesus." Ward hit his head lightly on the back of the seat a couple of times. "I came over here to distract you and ended up _really_ getting the pity party started. Way to go, Meachum."

For some reason that made Danny laugh softly and look a little less flattened. He pressed a hand against the side of the plane, beside the window. "On the bright side, feels like the storm's over. For now anyway. I remember the forecast was mostly clear earlier, so it should be smooth sailing from here to the coast."

"Yay."

"How far do you think it is to L.A., another couple of hours?"

"Something like that." Ward sighed and slumped in his seat. He wasn't even sure what time it was, two or three in the morning, maybe, on New York time. "Not enough time to sleep, just enough time to be good and brain-dead when we land for refueling."

Danny set the tea aside and raised the armrest so he could cross his legs under him on the double set of seats. "Want to learn to meditate?"

"Wow. No."

"C'mon, it clears your head."

"Gives me too much time to think, you mean. I have enough of that." Ward reached into his pocket. "Found a deck of cards in the back. I've been playing solitaire. You remember playing poker as kids?"

"I remember you used to cheat."

"Yeah, well." He shuffled the cards idly. "Now's your chance to get some of your own back. Key word being _some,_ since you're fifteen years out of practice, _little_ brother."

"Yeah, but you should see my poker face."

Ward snorted. "I've seen your poker face. I don't think I have anything to worry about."

"I was ten!"

"I meant now."

Danny swung his legs down, uncurling from the lotus position. "Okay, this is _on."_

And Ward grinned, really grinned, feeling New York falling behind him, and Rand, and all of it. For the first time, this was starting to feel less like abandonment, and more like an escape.


End file.
